1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical connector, and particularly to an electrical connector that provides more than one conductive contacts in a single contact receiving cavity of an insulative base which electrically contact a same conductive pad on a first printed circuit board to a same conductive pad on a second printed circuit board with multiple contacting points.
2. Description of the Related Art
Usually, in an electrical connector with multiple contacts in rows, each contact is placed in an individual cavity and is electrically connected to one of the conductive pads on corresponding mother and daughter PC boards. In high speed applications, in order to improve the reliability of the electrical interconnections between the contacts of the connector and the conductive pads on the mother and daughter PC boards, there is a desire that each contact has a portion with redundant beams electrically touching a same one of the conductive pads on the daughter or mother PC board to therefore provide multiple electrical contacting points between the conductive contact and the same one conductive pad, such that when one of the redundant beams electrically isolates from the same one conductive pad, the contact still can touch the same one conductive pad via the other beam(s). However, for high density and high speed electrical connectors, for example, the pitch between two adjacent contacts being less than 0.5 mm and signal transmission speed through the contact being above 1.0 Gigabyte/second, there is not enough room in a direction that the contacts are aligned in rows for accommodating the contacts with redundant beams. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,823,823 and 6,206,713 each disclose that two conductive contacts are received in a single cavity of an insulative housing. However, the two conductive contacts are spaced away from each other and joined together via an insulator. Further, the above two patents do not disclose that the two conductive contacts in the single cavity electrically contact a single conductive pad on a PC board for providing multiple contact points purpose. Therefore, the above two patents still do not solved the above issue. This invention is aimed to address this issue.
An object of the present invention is to provide an electrical connector that provides more than one conductive contacts in a single contact receiving cavity of an insulative base which electrically contact for instance a same conductive pad on a first printed circuit board to a same conductive pad on a second printed circuit board with multiple contacting points.
To obtain the above object, an electrical connector includes an elongate insulative housing defining a plurality of cavities in a longitudinal direction thereof, a plurality of groups of contacts respectively received in corresponding individual cavities of the housing. The groups of contacts are arranged in two rows in a traverse direction of the housing. Each group of contacts includes at least two conductive contacts gathered side by side in the corresponding individual cavity in the longitudinal direction of the housing. The contacts each are stamped and assembled into the housing that its dimension in the longitudinal direction is much less than its dimension in the traverse direction, which reduces the room of the housing in the longitudinal direction without reducing the strength of the contact. Thus, the issue in the prior art is addressed.
In a second embodiment of this invention, the contacts are made from conductive wires which may reduce the manufacturing cost greatly.
The multiple contacting points concept of this invention may be applied to board to board connector, cable connector, line grid array (LGA) connector and any other connectors requiring multiple contacting points with mating devices.
Other objects, advantages and novel features of the invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description of the present embodiment when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.